A Shot in the Dark - Chapter 2
by Sylvie Orp
Summary: Follow-on from last month's A Shot in the Dark, Chapter 1


_In chapter 1 we saw CI5 called to an emergency at a disused shop. After a fire fight, t__hey uncover the dead and injured._ Evans draws Doyle's attention to a dreadful conclusion.

"Look," he said, pointing to a stranger on the floor.

Apart from the man being dead, Doyle couldn't see Evans' point. "And?" he said tetchily as he heard sirens beginning to swell.

"There's no gun, Ray," Evans said quietly.

Doyle looked again as a cold, icy feeling trickled down his spine. He stared at the corpse. "Do you mean to say that we've shot an unarmed man?"

"More than that, Ray," Evans had to point out, looking across to their dead and injured colleagues. Doyle stared at him and their eyes locked. "This guy's been dead for hours. I think we've shot each other."

Chapter 2

Doyle stared at Evans as his worse nightmare coalesced in front of him. It couldn't be true. His eyes widened as the horror of it sunk in. The spell was broken when they heard vehicles approaching at a great rate.

"We could say that we saw some blokes running off; heard a car leaving …" Evans babbled rapidly, but stopped when he saw Doyle's horror turn to shocked surprise.

Any comment Doyle may have managed was cut off when Cowley followed the medics into the building. Wordlessly, Doyle pointed them in Bodie's direction. Cowley knew shock when he saw it, and the fact that Doyle wasn't with his partner proved to Cowley how profoundly shocked he was. Was Bodie already dead? The Controller would jump to no conclusions.

"Well?" he barked at both of them. The harsh tone had the desired effect of jump-starting his agents.

"It all happened so quickly, sir," Evans started off.

"Shall we follow the ambulance?" Doyle cut in. If Evans was going to start lying Doyle didn't want to hear it - yet.

Cowley pushed them out into the yard and to his car. They said nothing as they drove to the hospital; Evans in the passenger seat, Doyle in the back. On arrival, Cowley led the way to the canteen. He left his agents at the table while he queued up for teas. Doyle didn't even want to look at his colleague sat next to him.

"Look, Ray," Evans whispered, "we can get out of this if we keep our heads."

Doyle was shivering. It was like having the devil in person at his shoulder. He took a deep breath and put his head in his hands, covering his ears. "It's all such a bloody, bloody mess," he murmured.

"What is?" Cowley asked curtly as he set down the tray.

The agents hadn't heard him arrive. Evans jumped, but Doyle remained bowed. Just what did Doyle know that was upsetting him so much? Cowley had glanced back into the shop when they had left and had seen Bodie being carried across the floor on a stretcher towards the ambulance. His face was clearly visible; they hadn't covered him up as they would a corpse. So if it wasn't Bodie, then what? Had Doyle shot an innocent civilian? Or a child wandering into the field of battle? Neither scenario was impossible, but Cowley would wait for facts, not conjecture. Doyle looked up slowly. His eyes were swimming but no tears came. Cowley pushed the tea towards him. Doyle winced at the sweetness but drank anyway. He needed to get his version in before Evans.

"I may have shot Bodie, sir."

There; it was said and in the open. There was no going back now. Doyle didn't look at his colleague. Evans was furious. If Doyle wanted to be a martyr that was his show; Evans didn't want to go down in flames with him. But he kept quiet. He waited for Doyle to have his say while looking for a way out for himself - even if it did mean stitching up his colleague.

"Go on," Cowley said brusquely.

Doyle explained as much as he understood of the rapid chain of events, concluding with Evans' opinion that an unarmed man lay dead at their feet and had been dead for a while. There was nothing there that Evans could dispute or wriggle out of. When Doyle finished his narration, Cowley turned to the other agent for his version. Evans felt trapped. If he lied it would be Doyle's report against his - and Doyle had hard facts and evidence on his side. And if Cowley found out he'd lied, that would be the end of his career. From what Doyle had just said though, it looked like the end of both their careers in any case. Evans thought very dark thoughts about Saint Doyle. Through gritted teeth, Evans recited his part in all this. Cowley now understood why Doyle was in pieces. Guilt was tearing him apart. Cowley needed facts and quickly.

"We'll have to see what the doctors and forensics have to say about all this," Cowley concluded. "Doyle, go home and change then come back here and tell me when you have some news. Evans, where's Street?"

Evans had forgotten all about his partner. His thoughts had been entirely focussed on getting out of this mess with his skin and career in one piece. His blank look gave Cowley his answer.

"Find him, then both of you report to me," was his final order as he got up and left.

"You bastard," Evans snarled as soon as Cowley was out of the way.

"I'm not going to lie for you, Mike. I can't see how me shooting Bodie affects you anyway."

"What makes you think it was you who shot him, Saint bloody Doyle?"

Clearly this hadn't occurred to the shocked agent. "You mean …?"

"How the hell do I know? But you've now put the mockers on getting either of us out of this particular hole, haven't you? How the hell you ended up in CI5 God alone knows. You haven't …"

Doyle had had enough abuse and shocks for one day. He got up so suddenly the chair clattered to the floor. His mobile face had changed from despair to white rage in the space of a heartbeat.

"Shall we settle this outside?" he snarled.

Evans backed down at the naked fury in front of him. A security guard came over when he saw the men squaring up to each other. The two agents glanced in his direction. The guard didn't need to say anything; he saw that the mood had been broken and the tension suddenly ebbing away.

"Sorry," Doyle said to the guard, pushing past Evans contemptuously. He wanted to put as much distance as he could from him. The man disgusted him. Evans stayed where he was as the guard righted the chair and looked again to make sure that he didn't follow Doyle to continue the row. Evans meekly sat down and tried not to look at the people in the canteen who were staring at him and wondering what had just gone on.

Doyle sat on the loo for a while, working his way through his anger. After several minutes he left, had a cold wash, and then went to the men's surgical ward to see if there was any news. There was. Bodie's operation had gone well. The bullet had gone through his body without hitting anything major. He'd lost a lot of blood and was in shock. They were monitoring closely. Doyle heard the caution and knew from experience that Bodie still had a road to travel. He asked the nurse if he could sit by the bedside and she thought it a good idea. Left alone with his partner, Doyle took Bodie's hand, apologising to him - he was still convinced that he was the cause of this, and that his mate could still die because of it. Self-pity and self-recrimination weren't new experiences for him. He knew that he should follow Cowley's orders and go home for a hot shower and a change of clothes, but he couldn't bring himself to leave Bodie's side. Not now.

Doyle didn't know how much time had passed. He was dozing when he felt a tug on his hand. He opened his eyes slowly and raised his head. He realised two things - one: his headache had just increased tenfold while he'd slept; and two: he was still clutching Bodie's hand.

"All right?" Bodie asked hoarsely.

Doyle didn't know who he meant. "I'm fine, Bodie. You're on the mend, too. Bullet went straight through. How it managed to miss your great stomach is a mystery!"

Bodie grinned and squeezed Doyle's hand again. "You look awful, mate," he said sleepily.

"You should see things from this side!" Doyle countered.

The smile spreading across his friend's face lifted Doyle's spirits as nothing else could. Bodie went back to sleep and Doyle continued holding his hand - more for his own comfort than Bodie's.

Less than an hour later, Cowley turned up. Doyle was again dozing. He scraped the chair back and got to his feet unsteadily when he heard a distinctive dry cough in his ear. He was so tired he felt drunk.

"How is he?" Cowley asked, looking worriedly at the patient.

Doyle gave the medical verdict and added that Bodie had woken briefly. Cowley heard the relief in his agent's voice. "How's Moore?" Doyle asked.

"Deep graze to the arm. Should be home in a few days." Cowley's eyes hadn't left Bodie.

"And Street? How's he?" Doyle didn't want to learn of any more casualties.

"Do you mean how or where?" Doyle was confused. "Street seems to be missing." Doyle was still confused. "I've an outing for you." His agent wasn't enlightened.

Doyle was reluctant to leave Bodie's side but he sensed Cowley's mood and knew that bucking orders wasn't an option this time.

"He'll still be here, lad," Cowley said, reading Doyle as he often could.

Doyle didn't ask where they were going as they set off in the rain. They ended up back at the shop where it had all started. Empathy wasn't one of Cowley's strong suits. The CI5 cars were still there. When they entered the shop Doyle was surprised to see Evans, who threw him a filthy look. There were a couple of other CI5 agents in attendance, too.

"Now," Cowley began, addressing all present, and drawing out a page from his folder. "This is Bodie's medical report."

_So much for the Hippocratic Oath_, Doyle thought to himself.

Cowley grasped Murphy by the arm and dragged him forward. "The bullet entered here," he said, poking Murphy in the guts, then wheeling him round, "and exited here." He poked the agent in the back, just left of the spine and just above his belt. "What does that tell us?"

"That the shot came from above, or from someone a lot taller than Bodie," McCabe replied like a diligent pupil. This was not his usual role but he had a lot of ground to make up following a recent fiasco.

"Murphy, you're Bodie. McCabe you're Street."

Doyle hadn't had a chance to ask any further about Street's absence. Cowley made Doyle and his 'partner' and Evans and his 'partner' re-enact the events as they remembered them. Cowley nodded as they played their parts, their hands and fingers making imaginary guns.

"So," he asked once he'd got them re-assembled, "who shot Bodie?"

It was like an Agatha Christie mystery. The agents expected Poirot to appear to give them a long-winded answer. Into the silence, Cowley answered the question himself. "It's unlikely to have been Bodie. So, Doyle then?" His eyes raked his audience.

McCabe continued his role of star pupil. "He was on the ground floor with Bodie so it couldn't have been him. The crates were in the way in any case."

Cowley was pleased that McCabe had come up with the answer. Hopefully this conclusion would ease Doyle's sense of guilt.

"Street or Evans then?" Cowley continued, trying not to look at McCabe. Someone else needed to join in the class. No-one did. It was clear that, as they were on the stairs at the time, it could have been either one of them. The penny dropped with Doyle, but he tried to dismiss it. He was jumping to conclusions. Could Evans have been so keen to lie his way out of this because it was he himself who'd shot Bodie? An accident certainly, but even so … Then there was Street. Had he done a runner because he believed that it was him instead who'd had his finger on the trigger?

Into the silence, Cowley brought the thought out into the open. "A possibility, gentlemen. But let's look at other scenarios." He then went on to outline the unknown gunman option; a sniper who'd fled the scene unnoticed and unheard by Doyle or Evans. The irony that Evans had suggested this to Doyle in the first place was not lost on him. Doyle avoided his colleague's eye.

"What about ballistics?" Doyle said, not ready yet to relinquish his heavy cloak of guilt.

"I wondered when someone would raise that," Cowley said approvingly. "The bullet dug out of the corpse," he pointed to the ground as though the man were still there, "and the bullets which hit our agents were from the same gun. A gun, gentlemen, which was not from our armoury."

Cowley let this thought seep in. Evans was the first to comment. "Then why the amateur dramatics if you knew it wasn't us?" Evans couldn't keep the anger from his voice - which didn't go down well with a stressed Cowley.

"The 'amateur dramatics' as you called it," he growled, "was to prove once and for all that we are dealing with an outside assassin. One which you let slip through your fingers." This accusation was aimed at Doyle and Evans, the others quietly relieved that they weren't in Cowley's firing line.

Doyle's mind was at last firing at its usual efficiency. He read between Cowley's lines. If the Controller had simply explained things to Doyle, even with Bodie's medical file in his hand, Doyle wouldn't have believed him. He would have convinced himself that Cowley had tampered with the evidence to ease his agent's self-guilt. So Cowley needed to re-enact the scenario step by step to convince Doyle that his was not the finger on the trigger. Along the way, Evans and Street had been cleared too. There was no way that even Doyle could talk himself into the role of assassin now. Cowley was pleased and relieved see that Doyle was coming to terms with this new information.

"So, when you have a moment gentlemen," Cowley concluded sarcastically, "I would like you all to have a go at finding who is responsible."

His audience looked sheepish but knew an order when they heard it. Cowley began to leave, then turned in the doorway towards them.

"Oh, and Evans, when you track down Street tell him I'd like a wee word with him."

With that threat hanging in the air, Cowley left.


End file.
